


no holds barred

by Chierei



Category: Supernatural, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: BAMF!Katsuki Yuuri, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Demons, Established Relationship, Hunter!Yuuri, Identity Reveal, M/M, POV Alternating, References to Supernatural (TV), Secrets, VicturiBang2017
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 21:18:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12491048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chierei/pseuds/Chierei
Summary: "If selling my soul is all it takes to win, I'll give you my whole body, no holds barred."(In which Yuuri is a skater and a Hunter who is very good at keeping his two lives separate. That is, until, he hears a woman, buxom and beautiful, leaning a little too close to Yurio one day about how he could be the best for the price of one little soul.)





	no holds barred

Yuuri was nineteen and one year into his training at Detroit when it happened. He had been homesick enough to have been in the middle of several ill-advised drunken decisions at a local college bar that he had managed to stumble into despite not at all being over the age of twenty-one. The last thing Yuuri remembered before blacking out had been him laughing as he followed someone out the front door of the crowded club, his head spinning and the distant pounding of the bass echoing in his skull.

When Yuuri wakes up, his head is still pounding and his wrists are handcuffed to a rusted bed frame. There is a stranger next to him, a pallid woman with limp blonde hair and dried blood crusted a deep brown covering her neck as a second stranger—the man that Yuuri now recognizes as the stranger in the bar—hovers over her. Yuuri has about a minute to panic before the world devolves into chaos.

After, this is what Yuuri works out:

First, vampires were real, but not in the over-the-top Hollywood fashion. There was no stakes or garlic but instead, razor sharp machetes dipped in dead man’s blood.

Second, his saviors were Caroline and Darian Cooke. Caroline could swing a machete hard enough to decapitate a man in a single stroke, and Darian could stuff a bloody head in a backpack without flinching.

Thirdly, at one point during the struggle, Yuuri had apparently kicked the vampire ( _what the fuck is his life_ ) hard enough in the head to distract him from Caroline. Both Darian and Caroline are impressed with his flexibility considering Yuuri had still be handcuffed at the time.

Most importantly—it wasn’t just vampires. It was ghosts and werewolves and wendigos; it was all the creatures and crawlers that stalked the darkness, waiting on the edges of society and just waiting for their next meal. And once you know, you _know_.

 

* * *

 

When the body is salted and burned and the girl is dropped off at the local hospital, Caroline and Darian try to drop Yuuri off at his dorm. Yuuri, who has a core of steel and was exhausted with a string of bruises around his wrists coupled with the pounding ache of a hangover, has lost any polite filter that his upbringing has given him. Instead, he asks that they teach him because Yuuri will be up at night, remembering the feeling of helplessness he felt as he was chained and watched a vampire drain blood from someone. They refuse, but Yuuri is stubborn, resolute, and they can see the hard look in his eyes of someone who can’t close a door after it has been opened.

They agree in the end, and this is the first time Yuuri finds a purpose in something other than skating.

Yuuri spends the summer in the back of a faded blue pick-up truck learning from a ‘Best of’ tape of hunting. Darian teaches him how to pick a lock in under thirty seconds in a motel in Arkansas while Caroline hands him his first gun and teaches him how to shoot in an empty field fifty miles west of Wichita. They buy him a new suit in the next town over with a baby blue tie and hand him a fake badge and introduce him as junior Agent Yoshiki Hayashi. Their first hunt, conscious of their rookie, is a hospital haunting where they hand Yuuri a sawed-off shotgun packed with rock salt. It goes horribly wrong, and Yuuri ices a bruised shoulder for the next two days but it resolute. Their second hunt is a shapeshifter and is where they learn that Yuuri can be deadly quick and dangerous when armed with a silver knife. The third hunt is a coven of witches. At the end of their second month and fifth hunt, Caroline drags him into what is likely the seediest tattoo parlor on the west coast, and Yuuri gets a pentagram encased in the sun tattooed on his left hip bone.

By the end of their summer, Yuuri has learned how to hit a moving target with a bullet from fifty feet, recite three different exorcisms in their original Latin, and bullshit his way into any crime scene with nothing more than a fake badge from Kinko’s and a smirk. He learns that Darian and Caroline had lost their daughter to a Wendigo half a decade ago when Darian presses a worn rosary into his hand as they hunt a group of demons and tells him their story. He also learns that there is no such thing as a retired hunter.

When Caroline and Darian drop him off in front of his dorm three months later—three months that felt like a lifetime—Yuuri has a thick layer of bandages wrapped around his stomach ( _tulpa_ ) and a heavy but healing limp ( _poltergeist_ ).

They hand him a duffel filled with the tools of the trade—silver bullets, rock salt, two shotguns and a pistol, a silver dagger the length of Yuuri’s forearm, a flask of holy water, a book of exorcisms, and a second-hand rosary. They also leave him this: their phone number and a list of hunter contacts that he can trust. They tell him to take care, and Yuuri watches until the red of their taillights disappear from the parking lot.

Yuuri is not prepared for the upcoming skating season, but for the first time, he knows that he’d spent his time on something more important. He places 8th at Skate Canada, after he gets sidetrack four days before the short program by a haunting halfway across town and skates his program with bruises scattered across his back and a thick purple ring the shape of a hand around his wrist. He places 6th at Trophée de France after he’s healing from a bruised rib. Both are still higher than he’d placed the year before.

Yuuri grows lean lines of muscles, his normal workout supplemented by the need to be better, faster, and stronger of a hunter. He can’t afford to be injured as often as he has been if he wants to continue skating, knowing one broken bone can cost him an entire season at best and the end of his competitive career at worse. But Yuuri has always been bad at looking away when someone needs help so he continues to collect cuts and bruises that he dutifully hides from Celestino, learns to skate through the pain, and continues to imagine the day he can skate on the same ice as Victor Nikiforov.

And Yuuri falls into a routine, only slightly disrupted by the arrival of Phichit who enters Yuuri’s life like a small whirlwind of sunshine and social media. And Yuuri doesn’t know if Phichit just doesn’t notice or doesn’t mention his tattoo or the suspicious bruises or the days where Yuuri will disappear from class for a few days before returning. Yuuri’s gotten better, both in hunting and skating, and as his ranking steadily climbs, he chooses his hunts more carefully, limits himself to salt and burns or lone monsters. He calls Caroline and Darian with tips on jobs and becoming passing acquaintances with a dozen hunters. He keeps his head down with he hears rumors of the Winchesters, of angels and demons, and gates of hell, but he exorcises more demons in two months than he had the entire year previous and was pretty sure he was reciting exorcisms in his sleep. He starts keeping the gifted rosary wrapped around his left wrist with its pure silver cross pressed against his palm, and no one mentions the new addition to his wardrobe beyond a curious glance.

The year of Sochi was supposed to be Yuuri’s year. He’d kept his nose down in hunting, making more and more calls to nearby hunters so he could focus on his skating. The bruises from his last hunt—fucking _fairies_ of all things—had long faded.

It wasn’t just the call about Vicchan though, that spiraled him down. Part of it, perhaps, but it was the call he’d received no more than three hours later. _Darian is dead_ , she’d told him over the phone, her voice cold and empty. Demons, in the end. The Winchesters’ and their angel had barged in at the end to save the day, she said, gratefulness the last thing from her voice, but it had been too late for Darian. She already salted and burned the body, but she thought that Yuuri would want to know. Her voice breaks at the end of the call, and Yuuri holds himself together enough to end the call though he can’t remember a single thing he said. After he’s hung up, he curls up on the floor and cries. The guilt eats him—guilt for being away from Vicchan, yes, and more guilt for not going on that last hunt before the GPF, for deciding that the other hunters could handle it without him, that he needed to keep himself uninjured to skate. And maybe, most likely, the two hunts were unrelated but Yuuri can’t help the ringing of ‘what if, what if’ that echoed in his mind. Yuuri eventually cries himself to sleep and it is only Celestino’s knocking that wakes him the next morning, still curled up on the floor, his back against the wall and the hotel’s comforter wrapped around him. He could already feel his muscles aching, a crick in his neck that he won’t be able to work out in time, and he feels numb inside.

He flubs every jump during practice and trips over his own feet when he tries to practice his step sequence. Celestino sends him back to his room early to nap before the free skate but it’s too late by then.

 

* * *

 

The first time Victor sees Yuuri’s tattoo is two months into his stay at Hasetsu and after he sees it, he wonders how he never did before. Yuuri was always careful in the hot springs, clutching his thin white towel around his waist even when submerged in the water. Victor had considered the modesty at odds with the man who had stripped to his briefs only months prior and wrapped his man-killer thighs around a pole.

He catches a glimpse, finally, as they are changing back into their clothes in the empty locker room and the towel slips, just so, the show a peak of black against Yuuri’s left hip bone.

Victor had never considered Yuuri having a tattoo, never imagined Yuuri walking into a studio and baring himself to the careful ministrations of a needle. But even if he had, he’d have pictured something simple, delicate—maybe the soft carvings of a lily or the gentle outline of a snowflake—instead of what he does see: the thick black lines of a star—a pentagram, his mind supplies him—circled in a bursting sun. It’s the type of tattoo Victor who expects on…on an occultist, or a punk, or maybe even Yurio one day, but not on his Yuuri.

He must have made some type of noise, because Yuuri’s head swivels over to Victor and he pulls his towel up, his fist clenched so tightly that Victor worried that he’d see cuts on his palms from his nails tomorrow. Victor smiles a beatific smile. “I never took you for the tattoo type, Yuuri,” he purrs, curious.

Yuuri sputters in the same way he did when Victor had inquired about ex-lovers. “It’s not, I mean, college—my first summer and alcohol and I don’t mix—”

Victor manages to work out an explanation between the panicked Japanese interjections that occurred when Yuuri was well and truly flustered. Victor pulls himself closer to Yuuri, pressing his full palm over where the tattoo would be under the drenched towel, water still dripping down his neck from his hair. He can see the hot flush creep high on Yuuri’s cheeks at his proximity, and his own heart is beating heavy and fast in his chest. “An interesting design you chose then, Yuuri,” he murmurs, the seductive and playful edge still in his voice. He’s getting to know Yuuri better now though, and he has pulled back most of his over-the-top flirtation but can’t help the opportunity to bring himself as close as Yuuri will allow.

On cue, Yuuri springs himself backward and stutters again. “D-drunk! I was very, very drunk,” he almost shouts, more flustered than Victor would have thought. Victor had never gotten a drunk tattoo, but his list of inadvisable moments under the influence was quite lengthy nonetheless. “Will you,” Yuuri starts to say, licking his lips and Victor’s eyes trace the slight movement, “not mention it to my family? Or Minako-sensei? I don’t really want them to know.”

Yuuri was embarrassed, and it was adorable. Victor’s eyes soften. “Okay,” he vows. “It’s our secret.”

And it may be the first of Yuuri’s secrets, but it’s not the last that Victor finds.

Victor can read his secrets in his body, in the silver white scars that are almost invisible against his waist, four parallel lines and the two circular puncture wounds on his wrist. But those aren’t the only scars that Yuuri has mapped against his body. There’s a thicker scar on Yuuri’s right thigh, an inch long and a shiny pink, and another, round and puckered against on his chest that is the size of a dime. And then smaller scars, a multiple of them, littering Yuuri’s body like a map of untold horrors that his love has endured. Yuuri won’t talk about them, tenses when Victor traces them as they lay naked in their bed and Victor, who has never truly been good at reading social cues, knows enough not to ask. He just lays soft kisses against them and waits until Yuuri is ready.

 

\---

 

The questions build the more Victor learns about Yuuri.

“Latin?” Victor says as he is slowly shelving a box of Yuuri’s books to fit into his—their!—bookshelf. He flips through the one in his hand, the cover a supple leather and the pages yellowed with age. It looks expensive, and Victor could already see half a dozen more similar books in the same box. He picks up the next one, red leather with gold embossing, and stops the page at a particularly gruesome image of what looked to be a horned beast in rage. There’s a blotch of ink in one corner, a dark red-brown that bled through to the next few pages and Victor thinks that it’s a shame for such a book to be damaged.

“Ah, yes,” Yuuri says, glancing over from where he was unpacking his coats into the closet. “I, uh, minored in Latin. The language, that is.”

“My Yuuri is so full of talents!” Victor crows in response and manages to resist the urge to jump up and cuddles his fiancé close and instead continues to carefully shelf the books in with his own.

He ends up giving all of Yuuri’s special Latin books their own section, prominent and eye level.

 

\--

 

Victor loves watching Yuuri cook. Yuuri forgets himself when he cooks, and Victor loves watching him dance around their kitchen, bare feet against the tile and an apron tied around his waist. Yuuri was in the middle of chopping celery, alternating between the cutting board and stirring the fragrant stew while Makkachin begged with large, sad eyes at his feet for dropped scraps.

Sometimes, if Yuuri was preoccupied and forgot to set the knife down, he would twirl it in one hand, the steel blade gleaming dangerously in the overhead lights and flashing as it spun around and around at a dizzyingly fast speed. Victor thought his heart had stopped the first time Yuuri had spun the knife, so effortlessly and thoughtlessly, still stirring the pot with his left hand as he hummed to himself.

Victor never brings it up.

 

\---

 

One day, Victor opens up one of the cabinets and finds a 25-kilogram bag of rock salt sitting behind a half-used bag of Epsom salt. Victor hefts it up, turning it over thrice before shrugging and setting it back. He grabs the bottle of bleach he had been looking for and closes the door.

A week later, the bag is a quarter empty and the apartment has a lingering scent of paint. He asks Yuuri about the smell, and his fiancé just shrugs and gives Victor a kiss. Victor forgets all about it the next day.

 

 ---

 

There is more too.

Yuuri wears a rosary wrapped around his left wrist when he’s not skating. The deep brown wooden beads shine with a hint of red in the right light, perfectly interspersed and ending with a simple silver cross at that tended to dangle over the back of Yuuri’s hand. Curiously, Yuuri had never worn it in Hasetsu, but it had appeared as part of Yuuri’s routine within their first week in St. Petersburg. Yuuri wears it with of the casual ease of someone who treats it as an extension of their body, like how Victor treats the gold ring on his finger or how Victor’s father had worn a silver cross around his neck.

Sometimes, Victor will remember how Yuuri would reach over to his wrist when startled in their first few months together, as though reaching for something for comfort. Yuuri, and the Katsukis by extension, had never seemed particularly religious and the mismatch rings with such dissonance that he can’t help but bring it up one day.

“Did you want to go to service this Sunday?” Victor asks one day, draped lazily on his sofa with Makkachin on his lap and his phone by his side. Yuuri yelps and drops his knife that he was spinning in his hand, too lost in thought to have noticed Victor’s probing gaze. Victor feels a flash of panic as he sees the knife fall and only breathes again when Yuuri masterfully steps back and lets the sharp implement fall to the floor with a clatter. Victor usually would know better than to startle Yuuri, especially if he was holding something sharp, but he had been too distracted and lost in his thoughts as he tried to unravel the mystery of Katsuki Yuuri.

“Service?” Yuuri repeats, startled and clearly baffled. “What service?”

“Mass? Church service?” Victor clarifies.

“No? What…brings that up?” He picks up the knife from where he dropped it on the ground, already bringing it over to the sink to wash.

“Your rosary, zolotse,” Victor replies, his head peeking up from the opposite side of the couch. “You wear it every day. I’m not particularly observant.” Or at all observant, in honesty. Victor hadn’t been to church since he was started competing in the international circuit and, even then, it had only ever been on Easter and Christmas. “But I am sure we could find somewhere if you wished.”

Yuuri looked more surprised at the suggestion than Victor thought he would, and the thought made a sliver of doubt creep into his heart. Was he that bad of a fiancé that he thought Victor wouldn’t allow him to go to church?

“Oh, no,” Yuuri hastened to say, his head already shaking back and forth and his arms up. He was fingering the rosary self-consciously, his thumb and forefinger rubbing one wooden bead between them. “This isn’t, well, it isn’t like that. I’m not—I don’t—“

Victor shooed Makkachin off his lap with a gentle nudge, the poodle drowsily grumbling but jumping down to the floor to allow Victor to stand. Victor manages to catch Yuuri’s hands that were still sputtering in the air and silenced Yuuri’s stuttering with a kiss to his ring, followed by another to his wrist, right above the smooth skin where the rosary sat. “Uspokoĭsya,” he said, the Russian phrase rolling off his tongue. He knew Yuuri loved it when he spoke his native tongue, the soft syllables’ meaning indistinguishable but Victor’s tone, all love and adoration, was plain as day.

Yuuri twisted his wrists so they were holding hands, his thumbs rubbing small circles over Victor’s knuckles. “This,” he says, giving his wrist a little shake to hear the soft clatter of wood against wood. “It was a, a gift from a friend. Friends,” he hastily corrected, “in Detroit.” The words stumbled gracelessly from his tongue and something about them rang peculiar to Victor’s ears but he listened anyway. “His name was Darian and it, well, it used to belong to his daughter. He and his wife, they took me in. My, eto, first summer alone in America and um.” Yuuri wouldn’t meet his eyes, but Victor waited, not pushing him to continue. He trusted that Yuuri would always open up to him, offer his soul in small bits and pieces like a puzzle with half the pieces misses but would just show up in his pocket one day. “He died in a, in a hunting incident. Right before my short program. In Sochi. His wife called me after Mari had told me about Vicchan and, um, well, you know the rest.”

Yuuri didn’t continue but Victor could fill in the blanks. Yuuri rarely accidentally slipped back into Japanese like this, however small of a slip, and it was enough for Victor to know that he was uncomfortable. Yuuri had never told him what had happened at Sochi outright, never explained why he had lost his nerves when he had entered the free program in third place. It was Mari who had told him, eventually, when Victor had stumbled onto Vicchan’s memorial. Victor would have been devastated had it been Makkachin, would never have even been able to enter the ice, and therefore had never had the desire to pick at what was still likely a bleeding wound. Yuuri only ever mentioned it obliquely, but now knowing that it hadn’t just been Vicchan…

“Oh, Yuuri,” Victor murmured, pressing his fiancé into a hug, pulling the shorter man to press his face into Victor’s neck.

“It was a gift,” Yuuri continues to speak, only barely muffled into the skin of Victor’s shoulder. “And it makes me feel…comforted.”

“Okay,” Victor says and presses his lips against the side of his head, letting the hairs tickle his nose. “Okay.” And he doesn’t press for more.

  

* * *

 

Yuuri didn’t know how long he could keep this up—didn’t know how long he wanted to keep this up. Yuuri hadn’t been on a hunt in well over a year, ever since Victor had stumbled into Hasestsu and attached himself like a barnacle to Yuuri, ever since Yuuri had realized how amazing and perfect and wonderful Victor Nikiforov was in the flesh. When Yuuri had dragged Victor to the church in Barcelona, the last thing on his mind as he slipped a gold ring on the other man’s finger was how he was going to explain hunting.

Victor was more than Yuuri could have ever imagined. Victor, who looked at Yuuri with questions in his eyes, who’d trace Yuuri’s numerous scars but never ask. Who would press a hand against the anti-possession mark, fascinated, and who never questioned the how or why to any number of what Yuuri was sure was haphazard and disjointed excuses. Who—

Who might not look at Yuuri the same if he knew what Yuuri has done. If he knew that Yuuri could cut out the heart of a werewolf with the edge of a silver knife, decapitate a man in a single swing of a machete, and sneak into a morgue to drain a body of blood without flinching.

He had told Victor once that he was afraid of Victor seeing his shortcomings, but he was just as afraid for Victor to see some of the things that Yuuri was proud of as well.

There was no question that Victor would believe him, would believe every word that came out of Yuuri’s mouth no matter how much they sounded like the rambling of a deluded maniac.

The thought was terrifying.

Because if Victor believed, that meant Victor might want to know more and knowing more might mean hunting himself and hunting might mean dying. Yuuri knew that this was a game that you played until you died—that once you knew the truth was out there, you’d never be able to truly turn your back. Yuuri thought about the salted paint that he carefully lined all the windows and doors of their apartment in, about the intricate ruins he’d carved into the baseboards, and the rosary that, even now, he kept wrapped around his wrist. Hunters never retire.

Every time Yuuri had turned his back on a hunt in the last eighteen months he could feel a part of him cry out for the victims and another part sag in relief that maybe, maybe he could just be a figure skater and nothing more.

 

* * *

 

It happens like this:

Yurio was sulking.

It was to be expected. After all, he had only barely managed to land on the podium with his bronze medal after a nasty fall from a failed quad toe loop. To make matters worse, JJ had managed silver, and Yuuri was almost afraid that Yurio would physically fight the Canadian as they posed for photos. The only highlight, in Yurio’s own words, was that Yuuri himself had managed to claim gold with almost half a dozen points between him and the silver medalist.

It was weird being back in Detroit after almost two years. It was easier for him to fall back on old habits in a familiar environment, and he kept itching to make a small detour to check on his storage unit ( _paid for five years in advance in cash with a combination code given out to close Hunters to be used as a stronghold or storehouse_ ). It had almost been physically painful to leave his guns and other weapons behind, but Yuuri knew there had been no way to transport a small arsenal of firearms and knives into his home country. He had thought mournfully of his favorite silver hunting knife many times.

“Yura has been gone awhile, hasn’t he? Should we go check on him?” Victor says as he licks the cream off the small dessert spoon, rolling the curved metal in his mouth with not-entirely innocent intent. They were tucked in a small corner booth, Victor and Yuuri side-by-side against the long bench while the younger skater had taken one of the chairs. The restaurant was dim and noisy, the piped in music barely heard over the echoing acoustics that reverberated off the exposed brick walls. The restaurant and bar had been one of Yuuri and Phichit’s favored hangouts as students, though he knew that he had spent an embarrassingly large number of nights drunkenly flirting with the bartender who, if one squinted and drank a dozen beers, might look like a less attractive and American version of Victor Nikiforov.

Yuuri blinks a few times, the three glasses of sparkling wine having dulled his senses enough that he has to remind himself, forcefully, to focus on something other than Victor’s tongue.

Victor smiles and takes another slow bite of the tiramisu. “ _Yura_ , Yuuri,” he reminds, gentle and playful.

“Ah,” Yuuri says eloquently. “I’ll go check on him.” He slides himself out and up from the booth, grabbing his half-empty glass of champagne idly. The young blonde _had_ been gone a disturbingly long amount of time, and Yuuri should find him soon before he gets himself into some sort of inevitable trouble.

Yuuri is halfway to the bathroom to check on his young charge when he spies the short and lithe teenager leaning against the bar, his long blond hair still pinned up in a braided crown that made him look younger and more delicate than he really was. He and Phichit had taken advantage of the bar’s lax alcohol policy enough times to not be surprised that he hadn’t been shooed away from the bar already given his clearly underage status.

More noticeable, however, is that fact that he was scowling at a beautiful, buxom woman with long dark curls that fell over her impressive cleavage. She was leaning forward, smiling, the angle offering any discerning viewer an easy look down her low-cut blouse. Yuuri was pretty sure he knew where the score was at with Yurio in terms of sexuality, but even if he was interested, that woman was far too old for a seventeen year old, however curious he may be.

Yuuri frowns, already weaving his way through the thickening crowd to retrieve his wayward charge. As he got closer, ready to wrangle the younger skater back to the table and away from the claws of a would-be cougar, he overhears:

“You could be the best, and it wouldn’t even cost you anything…for ten whole years. Ten years is plenty of time to be on top of the world, isn’t it? All for the little cost of one little soul,” the woman—no, the demon—says, reaching out one long, manicured claw, painted a fitting crimson, to trace along Yurio’s jawline.

Yuuri’s blood runs cold.

He could see Yurio scowling at the women from his angle. He knows that Yurio isn’t taking the words seriously, but also knows that the young skater could agree. That’s how they get you—offer you your greatest dreams on a platter all for a soul that most of the world doesn’t believe exists.

Yuuri doesn’t even need to think about what he does next. He unwinds the rosary around his wrist and drops it into his glass. “Exorcizo te, creatura aquae. In nomine dei patris omnipotentis et in virtute spiritus sancti,” he murmurs in one long breath over the glass before he loops the necklace back around his wrist, the cross resting in his palm now, sticky with sweet champagne. He swipes a coaster and a steak knife off from a nearby table as he passes and pulls a pen from next one over and hastily draws a crude devil’s trap on the blank back. The crossroads demon is leaning over Yurio to give him a good view of her vessel’s cleavage as though it’d help her seal the deal.

He slides the coaster into his back pocket, potentially useless but just in case, and slips the knife up his right sleeve. Yuuri pastes on a smile and fakes a stumble as he gets close, forcefully inserting himself between the two bodies. His elbow pumps against the demon and his shoulder almost hits Yurio in the face, but he straightens himself quickly, his back to the demon. “There you are Yurio!” he cries, trying to keep a smile on his lips as he fingers the serrated edge of the knife hidden against his arm.

He uncharacteristically throws one arm over Yurio’s shoulders and nudges him back toward the table where Victor is distracting himself on his phone, the silver hair still starkly visible in the mass of bodies. “We were wondering where you wandered off to. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” he says, his tone light and joking and so unlike Yuuri that Yurio takes a step back, bewildered. “Go sit back down, Yurio.”

“What the fuck, Katsudon? W—“

“ _Go sit down, Yurio_.”

Something in his voice must have startled the younger boy because he turned without another question, only shooting a glance over his shoulder as he walked away.

Once Yuuri was sure he was gone, he turned around to face the bar, tilting his body to be able to see the demon—who is looking extremely disgruntled from losing her prey—from the edge of his vision. “Three bottles of water, please,” he orders as he bends over the bar to the bartender, his voice casual despite the hammering of his heartbeat. He has nothing to defend against a demon in a crowded bar; he had no devil’s trap spray painted on the floor or demon killing knives—instead he had a champagne glass of holy water and a dull knife hidden up his sleeve.

The demon’s vessel looks annoyed, and Yuuri can’t stop himself from gripping the stem of his champagne flute a little tighter. He wants nothing more than to tip it over the demon’s head, hear the hiss of burning flesh, and the pained cry come out from their lips. But Yuuri hasn’t stayed alive for the past five years by being hasty. If he was hasty he knew what would happen—collateral damage. Instead, he tries to smile—polite, distant, and no more threatening than a mama bear defending her cubs—as he waits for the three water bottles. When the bartender slides them over, the plastic surface wet from condensation and the plastic labels slipping loose, he could feel his nerves fraying. The demon had considered him for a few moments but his closed off body language was a deterrent, and they were already scanning the crowd for likely another victim. He’s tempted to down the flute of champagne to calm his nerves but resists, leaving the warming glass of alcohol on the counter.

Yuuri grabs the three bottles with a hasty ‘thank you’ that is lost in the din of the crowded bar. He’s already twisted off all three caps once he’s out of sight of the demon and he drops the cross in each, one after another, blessing each crudely. He screws the cap on each as he winds his way back to their table, Yurio and Victor chatting over their empty plates—a scowl on Yurio’s face and Victor smiling with a smugness that he does just because it annoys the younger man. At any other time, he’d feel a rush of affection and fondness at the sight, but all he can feel is steady hum of fear under his skin.

 

* * *

 

Victor knows something is wrong the moment he sees Yuuri. There’s a fixed quality to his face that Victor recognizes as him being on the edge of a panic attack. When Yuuri doesn’t make a move to sit back down, Victor tilts his head in question. “Is everything alright, darling?”

“Can we,” Yuuri says, hesitant, licking his lips. “Can we leave?” He keeps looking over his shoulder and toward the door, the drum of anxiety almost visible in his every move. Victor meets Yura’s eyes and sees the slight nod of the young blonde’s head.

“Of course, we can,” Victor says, pasting on a smile, the upturn of his lips feeling unnatural in this moment. Yura is already standing up and swinging his arms through his leather jacket—the bedazzled image of a roaring lion on the back catching in the dim lighting. Victor hastily sets some cash on the table, enough to cover the bill and then some, and in a rush, the three are pushed out the door, the little metal chime of a bell closing behind them.

It’s stunningly quiet outside compared to the loud cacophony of the restaurant, and Victor can feel his face flush in the sudden change of temperature. Every breath blows a soft cloud of condensation before him, and Victor tucks his scarf a little tighter around his neck.

“Here,” Yuuri suddenly says, shoving an opened bottled of water in Victor’s hand and then Yura’s in short order, leaving the third for himself. Victor takes it, more out of surprise then anything, and takes a small sip from it for lack of anything better to do with it. He doesn’t know what has gotten into Yuuri. He was antsy in a way that was similar to an upcoming panic attack, but it was mixed with an atypical tension, notable in the way he keeps looking over his shoulder and down every dark alley. Victor and Yura keep up an amiable bantering as they walked the few short blocks back to the hotel and let Yuuri fall behind them. The streets were quiet, the silent only interrupted by Victor and Yura’s bickering and the occasional car that would speed past. It was later in the night, and as they moved further away from the popular block of bars, the small crowd had quickly thinned to be non-existent. It was only a ten-minute walk to the hotel, but the nervous hovering of Yuuri was making it feel longer.

Their rooms are across the hall from each other, the small metal placards reading their room numbers gleaming in the artificial light. Yura had made a fuss to make sure they were not in adjacent rooms so he didn’t have to hear them at night, as though either of them would have risked a gold medal for sexual satisfaction.

Yura is already fishing the key, a small plastic card with the hotel’s logo emblazoned in red font, from his pocket when Yuuri grabs his wrist to stop him.

“I want you to stay in our room tonight,” Yuuri says.

“What? Fuck no. Like I want to stay in the same place as you two disgusting pigs,” Yura says, startled as he tried and failed to pull his hand back.

Victor can’t blame him—this was an odd request. Victor and Yuuri had a small suite, luxurious in the way that Victor always insisted. There was plenty of space for Yura to sleep if they folded out the couch, but there wasn’t much point when his room across the hall had a perfectly good double bed waiting.

Yuuri stays resolute, already pulling Yurio over. The door is opened in short order, the small hotel lock beeping in a cheery green when Yuuri waves the key over the sensor, and he kicks it in as he pulls the teenager inside. Victor follows, confused, as he watches his fiancé manhandle their friend to sit on the couch.

“Please, Yuri,” he says, the use of his real name startling after the last two years of nicknames or fond diminutives. “It’s important to me that you stay here tonight, okay? Please. Promise me, Victor, that you’ll make sure Yuri stays here tonight?”

It takes Victor a moment to realize that Yuuri had turned and was addressing him now. Victor had already shed his coat and scarf, draping them over the back of the nearest chair and was pulling his gloves off one at a time. “Of course, my love, but I don’t see why you won’t be able to see it yourself.”

Yuuri shook his head, and there was that frantic nature in it again, insistent. “I have to do something tonight, but I need you to promise you that you’ll stay in this room until I get back.”

“What?” Victor says, only hearing Yura echo the sentiment, surging back on his feet. “Where are you going? What’s going on, Yuuri?”

Yuuri runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the hair at the base of his neck in a gesture that is utterly foreign to Victor. “I just,” he starts to say before he rubs his eyes, pushing his glasses up with his fingers as he puts pressure against his face. “I just need you two to trust me, okay? I have to take care of some things, but I can’t if I’m worried about you two. So, please, stay here. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

Yuuri is already back at the door before either Victor or Yura can find something to say in response. Victor trusts him with his life, but what was going on? Yuuri is almost out the door when Victor’s brain finally catches up and he presses one bare hand to Yuuri’s forearm. “Yuuri, zolotse,” he starts.

“Trust me,” Yuuri pleads, pressing one hand over Victor’s and giving it a light squeeze. And then he’s out the door, almost running down the hallway and out of Victor’s sight. Victor is tempted to run after him, but something about his tone kept him frozen.

“What? You are just going to let him go like that? Fuck, that idiot is going to get himself hurt.” Yura is already muscling his way to the door, about to chase after the other man when Victor stops him, throwing his weight against the closed door to prevent the teenager from following. He doesn’t say anything to Yuri, just meet the cool green eyes with his own. “Really, old man?”

Victor nods. “Yuuri asked us to trust him, so let’s trust him. I’m sure it’s nothing bad,” he says, trying to put on a carefree tone. He misses the mark by a mile, but he knows that Yura wouldn’t have believed him even if he was able to dredge up his best acting skills at the moment. “We’ll just have housekeeping bring up some extra blankets for you.”

Victor refuses to move from the door until Yura finally gives him, throwing himself dramatically on the couch and pulling out his phone to text someone angrily, the very picture of a sulking teenager.

When Victor falls asleep several hours later, tossing and turning in the cold bed, Yuuri still hasn’t returned.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't _quite_ finish in time, so I have to split it in two parts! So, so sorry that my tenses are everywhere, but I'll try to clean it up once both parts are posted. Part 2 should be up soon! orz
> 
> Make sure you check out [the beautiful artwork by erebugs7](https://erebugs7.tumblr.com/post/166792881265/my-piece-for-victuri-big-bang-with-chierei-go)!! Thank you for being a wonderful partner for my first Big Bang!
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://chierei.tumblr.com/)?


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